Jake from Stone Mountain, Ga., told me I must stop what I'm doing to check out Denise Schaefer. Good work by Jake, as Denise is worthy of the "stop everything you're doing" command and also today's LLOD honors.

"The guy is Manute Bol, the 7'7" Dinka tribesman from the Sudan who was selected by the Bullets in the second round of the NBA draft. In just three preseason games -- all victories -- Bol has transcended a media sideshow. Ladies and gentlemen, The Brother From Another Planet can play. He has blocked 18 shots in 64 minutes, an average of one block every 3.6 minutes. By contrast, Utah's Mark Eaton averaged a block every 6.2 minutes last season when he set an NBA record with 456. Clearly, what we have here is both a new dimension in defense and a full-scale happening.

By midseason, a replica of the spear that Manute once used to kill a lion back in his native Africa will be on sale at NBA concession stands, right next to the Michael Jordan and Dr. J posters. A shoe company will have completed its prototype of the Air Bol, a name that, incidentally, describes many of Manute's baseline hook shots. NBA scouts will have traded their college guides for pith helmets -- forget Chapel Hill and Westwood, it's off to the Sudan! A thousand writers will have mined their thesauri for words to describe Bol's 91-inch body, to which he has added 17 pounds (up to 209) since August with the help of a weightlifting program and a lot of pizza with the works. Spindly. Spiderlike. Reedy. Tubular. Otherwordly."